Sunday, December 7, 2008

Ghengis got a bad rap...

Isn't my sous chef the CUTEST??? This is the activity that John and I like to do together, John is fascinated by cooking!






Tonight I made Mongolian Beef. Its kinda part of our "hey can we make this at home?" restaurant tour. And really, I think this time it was better. The kids have NEVER have eaten a beef dish I made. Tonight they asked for seconds, seconds, it was like the heavens opened and the angels sung, all the planets aligned and my children ATE! So, I figured I would share. This recipe is a compilation of several different recipes. The recipes I researched called for flank steak, but flank steak has ever been my friend. Its so tough, I have never gotten it to turn out right in any recipe I have used it. So I used round steak and it turned out perfect.

MONGOLIAN BEEF

Prep/cook time: about 30 minutes

1 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp ginger minced (or you can use the dried)
2 TBL garlic chopped (again you can use the dried, just use a little less)
1 C Soy
1 C water
1 1/2 C Brown Sugar
1.75-2lb Round Steak
1/2 c cornstarch
1 sliced onion


Slice your round steak into bite sized pieces. It helps if you tilt the blad of your knife to a 45 degree angle. Put slices on a plate, and cover them in cornstarch. Let the beef sit for ten minutes soaking up the cornstarch.

Heat up the oil in your wok or skillet. Let it get hot, but not to smoking. Put in your cornstarchy beef in batches. Let it cook in the oil until it gets lightly brown around the edges. Don't worry at this point about the beef being cooked through... it will go back in to cook more. Put the beef on towels to drain.

Once you have all the beef cooked, throw in your onion and start it cooking. Once the onion is translucent add in your ginger, garlic, soy, water and brownsugar, stir. Add beef back into sauce and onion mixture. Let it simmer away until the beef cooks through. As it cools the sauce will thicken slightly. Serve over rice.

4 comments:

tracey (aka rainbowmummy) said...

Oh wow, tat sounds so delicious! Thanks for sharing the recipe.

My Egg (5 year old son) is a bad eater. When the eat it likes *faint*!

And yes. Your sous chef is indeed the CUTEST!!!

tracey (aka rainbowmummy) said...

Wonder what we call round steak here in Scotland though.

Jennifer said...

Okay I did a little research... and I am not sure I am right. But I found this site that lables the scottish butcher cuts http://www.qmscotland.co.uk/healthyeating/pdfs/Beef.pdf The part I used as round steak is pretty much the lower leg/behind. (Now doesn't that just sound yummy?) It looks like it would be called topside, or silverstreak steak? However, if you cannot find that, I think flank steak would be skirt steak for you?

tracey (aka rainbowmummy) said...

OMG! You are just so sweet to have done that :0)

I have actually been craving this with pork for some reason.

I am terrible with raw meat (ocd) and I can't really handle cutting (man, ocd sucks at times) but I think I could manage to drop some pork chops into a pan (and then scrub my hands for half a day like the crazy person I am)!

Skirt steak? Nope for me, but that is not to say that's not what we call it as I have just realized I only know about three names of steak, sirloin, fillet and rump. Oh dear.

Thanks again and if I make it with pork I'll let you know how I get on :0)